The Red Cross seems to take a great approach to developing these projects. The biggest problem with WATSAN interventions is sustainability. Without community buy-in the project will usually no longer be functional after just a couple of months, either because it was not maintained or the people didn’t understand the benefits and took it apart for the materials. First, the Red Cross only builds water projects that use gravity, so there are no pumps to break and no need for electricity. The water is brought from a higher elevation down to the community, which works great because Timor is so mountainous. Second, each four-person technical team that helps with the training and building is Timorese, with a team leader, technician, and two volunteers. Not only does this get locals involved, but people are more apt to listen to their fellow countrymen.
The four person teams do not do all of the work either, but use motivated groups from the community, usually 30-50 people but sometimes as many as 200, that learn while they make the project, so they can maintain it themselves after. These community groups are also usually 30-50% women, which is great because women are in charge of gathering water, so their input is important. This community ownership makes it so the project will likely last for years, but monitoring of completed projects is extremely difficult. Community buy-in is really the most important thing for the long-term success of water and sanitation projects – without it, they will either not get used or fall into disrepair.
There were a couple things that did not make sense to me though. First, I thought there would be more ongoing monitoring and evaluation of completed projects by the Red Cross to make sure that they are still working. The other is that the sanitation projects uses septic tanks and there are no plans to empty them. Apparently, when one is full they just build another, something that has not had to happen yet.
Christoph also told us about something that the Red Cross does not do, but apparently is getting more common and is used by UNICEF. This is called Community Led Total Sanitation – CLTS; an awareness program to show people why proper hygiene and sanitation is important. Apparently what is done is they give someone in the audience a glass of water, and tell them to take a drink. Afterwards, they take a piece of hair, and run it through feces and then dip it in the water, and tell them to drink again. Obviously they don’t (I hope), but it is supposed to be a shock factor, basically “this is why you should wash your hands”. Sounds gross, but probably effective, we’ll see.
We also met a man named Ryder Rogers from USAID. He was not able to give us a lot of information, but invited us on a day trip to Laclubar in Manatutu district to see both a completed and incomplete project. It sounds great to me, so now we will be going to four districts instead of three – Ermera, Aileu, Manatutu, and Baucau.
We are starting to get some really good data from the people we are meeting; I just hope that we are as successful once we get to the field.
My Tetum vocabulary is improving as well. Here are some new words I’ve learned recently:
Nasi: rice
Babi: noodles
Mie: noodles (not really sure the difference between those two)
Los: very/ a lot
Sapi: goat
Ayam: chicken
Sop: soup
Basikala (Indonesian, another important language here): very good
Cosar: sweat
Ikan: fish
Sosis: sausage (which basically means hot dogs)
Telur: egg
Russa (Indonesian): Broken
So How cosar los would mean I’m sweating a lot. As you can see, most words I’m learning either have to do with food, sweating, money, or pictures. The food here is pretty good, but the spices are a lot different than what I am used to – interesting, but in some cases not something I would necessarily order in the future. Sometimes things can also get very spicy as in hot, but that is usually your own doing – at dinner I just put three different kinds of hot spices on my nasi goreng special and thought I was going to die. Nasi goreng is a good fried rice dish, usually with a meat in it. One place we went that meat happened to be cut up hot dogs. Babi goreng is similar, but noodles. We have been going to a lot of little local places, and every meal is literally between $1 and $3, so for three of us (with bottles of water) we haven’t had to pay more than $9 for a meal. The one exception was OMB or One More Bar, an ex-pat Australian place we went the first day. Honestly, I didn’t think the food was as good as the hole-in-the-wall places, but it was at least three times as expensive.
Today we had a really tasty fish at lunch called Trevally with rice, some sort of pickled tomatoes, and a collard-greens like substance called Cassava leaves. Pretty bitter, but tasty (I didn’t really like the tomatoes). Yesterday there was a soup (I thought bland, but it was probably the restaurant, not the dish) called Gado-Gado. I’ve been having a really fun time trying all of these new dishes, sometimes with good results, sometimes with bad. There’s also a lot of good fruit juice around – guava, papaya, mango, etc.
One of PVAs former students, a woman named Ruth Kimball, met us at the hotel this evening after taking a helicopter in from one of the districts called Manufahi. The helicopter took 20 minutes, which is great because by car it’s more than six hours. It’s amazing that a country can be so hard to drive around when its so small, but I guess that’s how bad the roads are. She works for an EU agency doing monitoring and evaluation for agriculture projects in the district and has been here since 2008 – but what she really loves is youth development.
We went with her to a small NGO called Movemento Criancas Unidas or Movement of Adolescents and Children she has been volunteering at and saw a bunch of little kids that did a couple of songs and dances for us, she said they always get really excited when foreigners come to visit. I have a couple of videos of it, including one of PVA trying to teach them the walk like an Egyptian dance, but there is no way I’ll be able to upload it on this internet connection. Bear cub and I were not looking forward to going, but I’m really glad we did, it was a great experience.
She seemed like an incredibly brave person. She came to Timor-Leste because she wanted to see a Southeast Asian country with no plans on what she was going to do here, found a job and never really left. She did Peace Corps after graduating from DU in 2004 and has only spent about 2 weeks in the USA since then. We’re hoping we can go to a fundraiser dinner for her NGO on the 23rd when we get back from the districts. Not only that, but she speaks Tetum, Spanish, and Portuguese. It’s great to see someone with so much passion; I hope she can find a paying job doing youth development; it seems like what she should do. I really hope that I find something after Peace Corps that I am as passionate about as she is with her work.
Christoph Blaimschein from the Austrian Red Cross
Ryder Rogers from USAID
Lunch with Trevally fish
The kids dancing at MCA
Us all crowded into the back of a Malaysian guy named Wilson's Jeep leaving MCA and going to dinner. That's right, Ruth is on PVAs lap. He said no to me.
Ruth sounds like a real adventurer! Although I don't know why PVA wouldn't let you sit on his lap! You are learning so many great things.
ReplyDelete